One of the things we learn quickly in our society that it is vastly important to be right.
Being wrong is a way you are pushed down the hierarchy in our society - being wrong is shameful - it makes you vulnerable to those who know - and knowing means being right first time and always. Because as this NYTimes article says, being wrong means you have to apologize - and is there anything more defacing in the social hierarchy than having to apologize? Being right means you've always known what is right - that you personally have never been wrong.
There are so many things you can be wrong about - like knowing which clothes to wear, what to say and do, being the wrong gender, having a 'subpar' body, what to think, which books to read, what is cool, who else is wrong... it goes on and on and on...
Being right is pretty stupid. It's hubris.
It is also anti-science.
Because any (good) scientist knows that being wrong and being okay with being wrong is awesome when it comes to science. Science is about evolving the right answer, it is about being wrong until we figure out how to be right about a theory and even then theories are never proven right, they can only be proven wrong but running with it until we find out what is wrong about it (Popper).
This is how evolution works. It's about constantly evolving a theory until it works, whether it is social policy or thinking about gender in society, for example. How we think about marriage has changed so much during my lifetime.
But we also see this with things like television too - what we think of as a television has changed so much since the days of rabbit ear antennas to flat screen monsters we now have on walls. Computers have evolved and evolved again, storage devices have changed from open reel tapes to USB flash drives. There are things that haven't changed much and that includes things like artificial intelligence, unless you believe the hype. Music and even religion has evolved.
What was right before is wrong now, or at least not as good.
The problem with right and wrong is when we apply the words to ethics, behavior and morality. There are things we can do that will always be wrong, like hurting others. But what if ... we learn something via doing the 'wrong' thing? Hopefully. Imo the best politicians are those who know what it feels like when life has given them lemons. Yet they are the ones we disqualify because converting lemons to lemonade is often a messy business.
There is no moral judgment when it comes to science and being wrong and right, despite the ethics of some experiments. When is it wrong to inject radioactive isotopes into someone? In some rare medical experiments for diagnostic purposes it is still done, where the diagnosis out-weighs the damage the experiment might do.
Sometimes right and wrong are sometimes seen as perspectives that allows men to wiggle out of ethical dilemmas using sophistry.
There is no clear cut line between the binary of right and wrong. Sometimes it's quantum mechanics all the way down with all that uncertainty.
Being wrong is a way you are pushed down the hierarchy in our society - being wrong is shameful - it makes you vulnerable to those who know - and knowing means being right first time and always. Because as this NYTimes article says, being wrong means you have to apologize - and is there anything more defacing in the social hierarchy than having to apologize? Being right means you've always known what is right - that you personally have never been wrong.
There are so many things you can be wrong about - like knowing which clothes to wear, what to say and do, being the wrong gender, having a 'subpar' body, what to think, which books to read, what is cool, who else is wrong... it goes on and on and on...
Being right is pretty stupid. It's hubris.
It is also anti-science.
Because any (good) scientist knows that being wrong and being okay with being wrong is awesome when it comes to science. Science is about evolving the right answer, it is about being wrong until we figure out how to be right about a theory and even then theories are never proven right, they can only be proven wrong but running with it until we find out what is wrong about it (Popper).
This is how evolution works. It's about constantly evolving a theory until it works, whether it is social policy or thinking about gender in society, for example. How we think about marriage has changed so much during my lifetime.
But we also see this with things like television too - what we think of as a television has changed so much since the days of rabbit ear antennas to flat screen monsters we now have on walls. Computers have evolved and evolved again, storage devices have changed from open reel tapes to USB flash drives. There are things that haven't changed much and that includes things like artificial intelligence, unless you believe the hype. Music and even religion has evolved.
What was right before is wrong now, or at least not as good.
The problem with right and wrong is when we apply the words to ethics, behavior and morality. There are things we can do that will always be wrong, like hurting others. But what if ... we learn something via doing the 'wrong' thing? Hopefully. Imo the best politicians are those who know what it feels like when life has given them lemons. Yet they are the ones we disqualify because converting lemons to lemonade is often a messy business.
There is no moral judgment when it comes to science and being wrong and right, despite the ethics of some experiments. When is it wrong to inject radioactive isotopes into someone? In some rare medical experiments for diagnostic purposes it is still done, where the diagnosis out-weighs the damage the experiment might do.
Sometimes right and wrong are sometimes seen as perspectives that allows men to wiggle out of ethical dilemmas using sophistry.
There is no clear cut line between the binary of right and wrong. Sometimes it's quantum mechanics all the way down with all that uncertainty.
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